Donglegate: Why aren't we questioning what Anonymous did? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/03/22/donglegate-why-arent-we-questioning-what-anonymous-did/ <comment><USER2> So, lets start with the factual corrections.

The jokes were most certainly sexual by everyone's account. Whether they were sexist is a topic on which there is disagreement.

Anonymous is a mantle, not a collective of any meaningful distinction. I could be Anonymous in one context and have no presence awareness of or agreement with other so called members of Anonymous or their actions.

The Anons who physically travelled to rally for the victim in the Steubenville rape case are almost certainly not the same folks trying to ruin Adria Richard's life.

What remains bizarre in all of these discussions is the lack of agency with which the companies are described. Play haven and Sendgrid made these decisions, not Adria not the jokers, not you, and definitely not Anonymous.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Like many, I have supported lots of Anonymous's initiatives, as they've taken on something of a Digital Robin Hood-esque persona." -- I love how the freaking author couldn't even take personal responsibility for passive support, had to lead off with "Like many, "

Anonymous is a dog without a leash. If you cheer when it bites someone you dislike, be ready to feel like a asshat when it bites someone you like, or just an innocent passerby. But don't blame the dog, and don't look around like everyone else was supportive of this brave new unleashed dog initiative... it was just you.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree! We should question these kind of things more.

Why aren't we questioning what burglars do when they rob people's houses?

Why aren't we questioning what soldiers in Iraq do to enemy combatants?

Why aren't we questioning why school children bully other children?

</sarcasm>

We aren't questioning this stuff because it's how the world works. Good luck getting angry and afraid people to stop doing harmful things based off emotions and perceived benefits. When any of these people are caught, we punish them as we are able within the constraints of the law as best we can. There really isn't anything to question here.

<comment><USER3> Author is questioning his own tepid support of anonymous, a personal problem put into the public space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> :%s/Anonymous/Some random people on IRC/g It's pretty crazy how people jump to treating Anonymous as some sort of cohesive organization - it's not, that's the whole point.

<comment><USER6> There's a theory that the same thing happened with Al-Qaeda. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Command_structure>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even so this is not going to make me any friends around here, I am perfectly fine with Anonymous staying a "wild card".

The idea is about "Lulz" and not about saving the whales. Sometimes these actions align with mainstream perception of "justice", sometimes they are not.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there really anything to question? What those people did is reprehensible and everybody besides those people knows that. Asking why we aren't questioning what they did is like asking why people aren't questioning what Charles Manson did.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't know of anyone who's condoning what they did but:

1) Anonymous is relatively inconsistent ... you can't count on them seeing the bat signal and arriving five minutes every time you need them (maybe they try and fail with some targets)? So even if you could point them at every injustice, would they show up?

2) We don't condone vigilantism for a reason. Everything you read was filtered through the court of public opinion and Anonymous wasn't (as far as I know) privy to any of the underlying discussions.

3) The processes that led to the two firings happen every day in corporate America. We don't need Anonymous for business to continue. And there are very defined labor laws to remedy incorrect business practices.

So while I appreciate that Anonymous will in some cases fight for things I agree with, they're far too erratic to trust. Funny that I feel the same way about my government!

</comment><comment><USER10> It's like being angry at a nest of hornets.

</comment><comment><USER11> because what they did was right, make some pressure on a company to "punish" a feminazi bully</comment>


Depression's Upside - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html <comment><USER2> There's productive depression and unproductive depression. Some people aren't compelled into productive depression.

Productive depression is a dignified depression¸ where the person realizes that the object of the angst is a little elusive. They know what the problem _isn't_ , and it is never the most obvious thing. They do their best to manage it and figure out what the _real_ problem is.

Unproductive depression is simply where you stop thinking about the problem too soon. Either blaming a facade of the depression, the most obvious and apparent source of the depression, or by giving up hope that the facade is solvable. Essentially, these people give up and stagnate.

There is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone profusely blame the wrong thing for their depression. There's little chance of these people escaping into productive work, because they've given up. They can't even start by realizing that what they _think_ is depressing them, might not actually be what is depressing them. That's step point five!

Depression does not make genius.

Where do I think productive depression originates? Well, I partly think it's a conscious choice where the intelligent person chooses not to ignore a problem, and there are a lot of problems to be depressed about. Stuff that does not _need_ to exist. This really is only my opinion, but we shouldn't have to deal with depression. We shouldn't need to "cope" with stupid, arcane ideas. But we'll just have to manage for now.

<comment><USER3> As the article says, malfunctioning isn't a privilege of the body, minds can do it too.

So the word "pathetic" is uncalled for. William Styron wrote a fantastic book about what it is like to be depressed: "Darkness Visible". Well worth a read.

<comment><USER2> From my comment:

 _There is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone profusely blame the wrong thing for their depression._

I'm wasn't specifically talking about people who casually blame the wrong thing. Maybe I need a stronger word than profusely....

On Darwin's side of the spectrum you have, well, Darwin. On other end of the spectrum you have people coming up with intricate ideas about how minorities are destroying everyone's lives.

Even though there is a lot of mental work in carefully choosing their illusory axioms to make the rest of their ideas naturally fall into place, I am very reluctant to call that work productive and I _do_ think that it's pathetic.

Of course, the very same mistake was made with this person, who profusely blames the wrong thing, as the person who casually blames the wrong thing: they stopped trying to find the real problem too soon. There are only two words that come to mind: undignified and arrogant.

Arrogant that they're questioning the wrong thing and not questioning whether the output of their thought process is precise, and therefore they're not questioning the thought process itself.

Perhaps it is _questioning_ that compels people into great, productive work. Depressed or not! Darwin held himself to high standards while he simultaneously, and perpetually, questioned his thoughts and the results of his thoughts. He did this to a point where his thoughts were very precise and congruent with the real world.

I _do not_ think it was the depression that compelled him into productivity, but his dignity. Compelled into a productive depression! He couldn't just shrug off his depression since that would mean ignoring certain issues. Again, this really is only my own speculation, but I don't think depression needs to exist in the amount that it does today. I don't think we're _born_ depressed and very rarely chemically imbalanced.

Since so many minds are malfunctioning, these are not problems of the individual but signify a much larger problem: a problem of a malfunctioning thinking on a global scale. It is how people mis-attribute this malfunction that I find pathetic.

This "malfunctioning of thinking" expresses itself a lot in life. It accumulates and wears down on people to a point of depression or lethargy.

I should also point out that I don't mean "pathetic" in the sense of "hate." When it comes down to it, the problem is too complicated to just blame an individual and I can't expect everyone to have this natural dignity that Darwin possessed, or the will to teach it to themselves. I feel more compassionate at the individual's level than ticked off.

The reason I'm ranting a little bit is because I take issue with glorifying the wrong thing (not you, but implied in the article). In this case: depression. I hope this makes my thoughts on this clearer.

Also, checking out that book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd blame vitamin D deficiency for the bulk of depression cases in the modern world. Indoors culture, heavy clothing, an aversion to organ meats - which the biology tells us are the most nutrient-rich parts. It adds up to a massive nutrition gap, one only slightly offset by the tiny amounts added to dairy.

<comment><USER5> I recently started taking vitamin D and I feel great. I'm more energetic, sleep better, and, yes, feel happier. So that's one data point in favor of your thesis.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to be _really_ grateful to you guys if this ends up being true for me. Going out to get some now :)

<comment><USER5> I should add that to really know how much you should be taking, you should have your blood levels tested, as different people absorb it differently. Here's a post on William Davis' Heart Scan Blog (oriented toward heart health, which includes Vitamin D supplementation):

[http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/getting- vitamin-d-...](http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/getting-vitamin-d- right.html)

He suggests about 6000 units/day as average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The implicit assumption of this article is that tendency to depression is a heritable genetic trait which is preserved in the population by selection pressure. It goes on to seek an explanation for the prevalence of depression in terms of greater reproductive fitness. The risk is that by not examining this assumption, it may be laboring under a misapprehension. Depression might be a learned behavior: more "software" than "hardware." The near-total failure to validate anti-depressants as an effective treatment for depression[1] suggests that we don't have a clue as to its actual etiology.

[1] E.g. [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/antidepressant-drugs-udontu-work-ndash-official- study-787264.html)

      "Given these results, there seems to be little reason to
      prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most
      severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments
      have failed to provide a benefit. This study raises
      serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug
      licensing and how drug trial data is reported."

__Update after reading the whole thing __: I like the practical developments this research has led to in Thomson's own practice. E.g. (page 6)

      "What you're trying to do is speed along the rumination
      process," Thomson says. "Once you show people the dilemma
      they need to solve, they almost always start feeling
      better."

But he seems to have really been reaching with his scientific conclusions.

<comment><USER8> I think the increase in depression may be a result of changes in the human environment over time. Depression may be an evolutionary acceptable downside to some other useful trait, which is simply more common now.

This is pure BS, but an example might be: People respond to rewards with mild addictive behavior, which a useful adaption. However, in our day to day lives there are few short term rewards which messes with the reward pathways in our brain leading to depression. So the an effective treatment might be playing games with a specific type of reward structure.

PS: Depression is a vary generic problem, so there might be hundreds of different failures that all result in the same symptoms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How prevalent are anti-depressants?

I get the impression that a large percentage of the american youth are on Prozac or others, and/or even medication for ADD. And also that the normal response for depression is medication.

In the Netherlands this is quite the reverse. Anti-depressants (AFAIK) are only used as a last resort, or as a kick-start for the healing process when it is a very deep depression. Kids in highschool taking drugs against psychological disorders is almost unheard of, except in clear cases of ADD.

<comment><USER10> I suspect that reports of this are highly exaggerated by the people that think that _every_ problem is solvable through 'putting your nose to the grindstone' and that everything else is just 'weakness.'

<comment><USER11> I disagree. The idea that our society hyper-medicalizes and therefore overmedicates human problems is, to my mind, very sensible. It by no means follows that all emotional problems are "just weakness" and that the solution is to pull oneself up by the bootstraps. Indeed, given that the latter is the ultimate in crude ideas of how to approach the psyche, it actually goes hand- in-hand with the hypermedical approach: if that's the only alternative, it's no wonder that people resort to drugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blogging as therapy?

 _He cites as evidence a recent study that found "expressive writing" — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes._

<comment><USER13> Maybe they have no one to talk to.

<comment><USER14> I think this is part of my problem - I don't have a close friend that I can talk to about stresses at home, etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On a similar note, I found this book [http://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return- Self-Anthony-Storr/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return-Self-Anthony- Storr/dp/0743280741/) to be quite interesting. It discusses about solitude, its necessity and other related issues like depression in detail.

</comment><comment><USER16> One page:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?pagewanted=print)

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2009-10-29-223937_the_powe...](http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2009-10-29-223937_the_power_of_negative_thinking.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't have time right now to look for the source, but it's reasonably well knows that depression improves critical thinking directly. (maybe this? [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a785...](http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a785363361) )</comment>


Instant Payouts for Marketplaces - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/instant-payouts-for-marketplaces <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533140)</comment>


Cancelling all student debt – giant welfare program for the upper middle class - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forgiveness-college-democrats.html <comment><USER2> This analyzes the benefit by a flawed mechanism; yes, _per capita_ , the upper middle class has a higher load of student debt than lower economic classes. But the real drag of student loans on quality of life and opportunity is revealed by ratios like student loan debt to net worth it student loan debt to income; the people who would have the most weight lifted off of them aren't the upper middle class.

OTOH, I don't think any of those pushing simple universal student debt cancellation would be mind limiting any windfall for the rich that would result ( _not_ exempting the debt forgiveness from income tax for borrowers above a set income level would be a dirt simple way to do that.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I get a partial rebate for the loans I've paid? I feel like a chump for paying back $35,000 in under 2 years. Perhaps a tax rebate instead of cold hard cash in my hand?

Doesn't make sense to punish those who made honest attempts to pay. Also, I completely support the forgiveness for people who went to scam schools like ITT Tech and Everest.

<comment><USER4> I've been paying my loans for 15 years. And why where at it let's bump up the social security and medicare ages. So, I can get f'ed coming and going.

And let's do s't about healthcare costs for families because that is something that's spiraling out of control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From my experience of teaching at a community college for 18 years it will not be a giant welfare program for the upper middle class. It will benefit the upper middle class but the ones who really suffer from student loan debt are the poor students going to college who have no realistic chance of ever getting a degree. They get saddled with unforgivable debt and it becomes a lifelong burden to them.

We need a new system. College should be free or nearly so for those who are qualified to go.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why there isn't something more of a middle path discussed. Limit the amount of interest that can earned by creditors maybe. I do find it unethical and strange that we allow 18-year-olds to take out crippling debts, and I find it predatory that anyone can profit off of this.

However, canceling all the debt messages a big "screw you" to anyone who made the sober decision of not going to a more expensive school (or not going at all). Sorry to say, I think it's unfair given this is the system we have and we can't go back in time and undo poor decisions.

<comment><USER7> There is a middle ground, it is rolling back the bankruptcy exceptions. If the burden is too high, let these people bankrupt out of them with the cost of having your credit/name tainted for years. Bankruptcy seems to be a 4 letter word no one dares speak anymore but it is the root of the issue here.

<comment><USER8> Right - it should be harder to get money for less-productive specialty degrees in the humanities. Creditors would have to decide whether to risk their money, and become gatekeepers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Three significant paragraphs from the article-> \</comment><comment></comment><comment>- Most people struggling to pay off their debts are not graduates of four-year colleges. They are instead non-graduates — people who attended college (often a for- profit college) but never received a degree. They have the worst of both worlds: debt and no degree. [...] The average four-year college graduate who takes out loans ends up with less than $30,000 in debt. That typically translates into monthly payments of about $300 — or about 7 percent of the starting salary of a brand new college graduate (which is more than $50,000 a year). Over time, this percentage declines, as the graduate receives raises. No wonder the overwhelming majority of college graduates repay their loans on time. [...] A recent Brookings Institution study by Judith Scott-Clayton found that the loan-default rate for borrowers with a bachelor's degree was less than 8 percent. The default rate for borrowers without any degree was a miserable 40 percent.

<comment><USER10> How do people attend and not receive a degree? Are they implying people have dropped out or is there some kind of course which doesn't result in a degree certificate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is so...wrong.

>"The average college grad makes 50k every year."

He's defining 50k as upper middle income? That's not upper middle income by any measurement or common sense.

And that's the average. Many college graduates or non-grads with loans make LESS that that.

That's millions of people.

Student loan forgiveness would help them alot. Not to mention stimulate the economy.

Also, the designation between upper middle income and upper middle class is important. You may have upper middle income but still be middle class. In some third world countries upper middle income is 500 bucks a year. That's not middle class.

>"For one thing, college graduates come disproportionately from higher-income families. Most of these families don't make enough to pay for college outright, so their children take out some loans."

Higher income. Can't afford public school tuition. Pick one. Also, citation needed. 'Higher income' and 'Disproportionately' are qualitative words. Without citations and a point of reference they are useless. Is it 1% higher or 90% higher?

>"Most graduates of four-year colleges, by contrast, are doing just fine. I know you've probably read stories about liberal-arts college graduates who ran up enormous debts and now can't find decent work. But they are the rare exceptions."

Wheres the citation?

This article is solidly in the OPINION piece category. It's kind of distressing to see that this person went to Yale.and considers themselves a real journalist but provides no citations to base his arguement. Instead he seems to rely on qualitative measurements to base his reasoning. It's scary how rich parents can help incompetent kids reach positions of power in America.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://outline.com/nLwL5D](https://outline.com/nLwL5D)</comment>


Ask HN: Computer Curriculum for Grades 9-12 - <AUTHOR>

I have been asked by a local private school to help come up with a computer curriculum for their students grade 9-12. (ages 14 -18) The school wants to make sure that every student graduates with enough computer knowledge for College/Work. The kids come into the school with a wide variety of backgrounds. Some have no typing skills and minimal interactions with any software other at all other than Word, while others have can touch type, have worked with Photoshop, and sometimes even some basic web editing.
Here are my current thoughts: 9th Grade:  Touch Typing, Internet research(for you own problems), Basic computer concepts, what is an OS, what are the different hardware parts. What do different computer specs mean. How to purchase a computer
10th Grade: Word, Publisher (more importantly I think, Word vs. Publisher), Excel, and Access  (again excel vs. Access), (I use the Microsoft Office names, but I probably will make a point of not using the Microsoft version of these products.)
11th Grade: How the internet works, maybe basic html/css
12th Grade: Light programming, maybe javascript, possibly using codeacademy or codehs.com
These are minimum for each grades, not what the students who want to learn more will be offered.
I would really appreciate some input from the HN community. <comment><USER2> More context might be needed here.

Where I live kids are interacting with computer way before they get to High School. I mean, five year olds are using computers and the Internet. To wait until HS to introduce some of these topics seems wrong. For example, all the local middle schools have some sort of a Lego Mindstorms class (some good, some bad, but they do have them).

<comment><USER3> This. What is the point of the curriculum? Are you trying to introduce them to what computers are and how they work from a hardware level? Basic user interactions of an average computer user? Office/business/presentation specialized skills? Intro into how software works and programming?

Computers are tools used by most people in a lot of different capacities, and depending on how people use them they need to learn different things. It all depends what you want then to walk away from the courses knowing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really the question I'm asking. What should every single high school student walk away with? Should it be knowledge of hardware? Specific software? General software?

<comment><USER3> If that is the case then I would say giving a high level over view of pretty much everything about computers is probably what you want. Individual areas can become very deep and diving too much into the specifics will be time consuming and will not likely to benefit kids who do not go into that area.

Some topics off the top of my head that are pretty good for providing a broad understanding that could likely be used by everyone are:

-Typing

-basic browsing of computers

-Hardware vs Firmware vs Software

-How the internet works

-Browsers

-Concepts of basic security and protecting your information online

-Main parts of a computer and what are they responsible for

-Troubleshooting basic computer problems

-What programming is

-How to use commonly used programs (ie word, excel, powerpoint etc)

I think areas like these are good to give someone an idea of how computers work, how to use them on a day to day basis, and how things relate to each other. But I don't think that this is really enough material to cover four years worth of learning.

Some areas that maybe useful to teach kids about but won't likely be beneficial to everyone going forward:

-Programming (focus more on the logic and concepts as oppose to language specifics)

-experience with different OSs

-Specifics of how main components work internally

-Using the command line/terminal

-Basic Analog and Digital circuitry as it relates to computers

-Computer networking

-Photoshop

-CAD

But this is probably to much information for high schoolers, and can become very deep and dense. Again it all depends on how deep you want to go.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Better Intuition for Information Theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.blackhc.net/blog/2019/better-intuition-for-information-theory/ <comment><USER2> Yeung (author of the article mentioned) was my teacher in school. He wrote a book more than a decade ago with a Venn diagram of four sets on the cover

[https://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Information-Theory- Techn...](https://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Information-Theory-Technology- ebook/dp/B000TNLRVY/)

I remember he draw such diagram almost every lesson to explain the mathematical structure of various information theory topics.

<comment> 0-_-0 I just went down the rabbit hole of Venn diagrams, and emerged with one for 7 sets:

[https://i.stack.imgur.com/kImwq.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kImwq.png)

<comment><USER3> That's truly awesome. Cheers!

Check out Lewis Carol's Logic Game:

[https://www.cut-the-knot.org/LewisCarroll/tridiagram.shtml](https://www.cut- the-knot.org/LewisCarroll/tridiagram.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is nice, but I could've sworn I saw the exact same diagrams in all the old-school information theory books I originally learned it from. I've drawn the I-diagrams the author gives in my notes quite a few times. I'm guessing the point of the paper is that it goes further than that?

<comment><USER5> The paper is from 1991, when was your textbook written?

<comment><USER6> The first place I saw these diagrams is in the first edition of Tom Cover and Joy Thomas's excellent textbook - copyright 1991.

But the Venn diagrams are presented in their book as mnemonic tools, and not in terms of entropies of an underlying "I-measure" as in the article. (Of course, the book is an introduction, not in a theorem/proof format.) So you're not sure how far the notions can be extended.

The world of information theory was small then, and the author of the paper would have been well-known to both Cover and Thomas.</comment></comment></comment>


Slips of the Tongue - <AUTHOR> http://www.historytoday.com/alexander-lee/slips-tongue <comment><USER2> This kind of mishearing is known as a "mondegreen": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen)

</comment><comment><USER3> A needed reference to the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, actually about the possible consequences of "careless talk", but that fits nicely on misundrstandings/mistranslating:

"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle."

[http://www.mostly-harmless.de/crllstlk.htm](http://www.mostly- harmless.de/crllstlk.htm)

An actual one Italian/French is the expression (once rather common in Italian) "La bellezza dell'asino", literally "The beauty of the donkey" used to decribe the beauty of a young girl, coming assertedly by a mistyping/misunderstanding of the intended French "La beauté de l'âge" (literally "The beauty of the age") into "La beauté de l'âne" that was consequently mistranslated:

[https://books.google.it/books?id=7zYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=P...](https://books.google.it/books?id=7zYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that most of the examples are in French. Does French possess more easily confused near-homophones than English?

<comment><USER5> oh, sure! speaking as a mono-lingual american, I'm pretty certain that all french phrases of the same length sound more or less the same (and quite romantic).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. However, none of those are slips of the tongue but rather what's referred to as "slips of the ear". A slip of the tongue is often called a "tip of the slongue" — an example of exactly that.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's accurate. "tip of the slongue" is an example of a spoonerism; a slip of the tongue is usually what people refer think of as a freudian slip.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip)

<comment><USER8> Yes. An example would be when you say one thing but mean your mother.</comment></comment></comment>


I Fought Comcast and Almost Won - <AUTHOR> http://www.nattaylor.com/blog/2014/01/i-fought-comcast-and-almost-won/ <comment><USER2> Puget Sound Energy has a similar problem.

They switched to a new (outsourced) billing system recently that was supposed to "dramatically improve" billing statements.

At our house, we had two accounts for PSE - one for the house power and a separate account number for a streetlight-like fixture on our property. The reason for the two account numbers was that they were billed differently: house power as normal, streetlight at a fixed rate paid once every other month.

To add to the complexity, we were enrolled in an estimated payments plan. Our costs stayed they same, month to month, with adjustments twice a year to update our average payment amount up/down.

Before the new billing system, we received bills once a month - with the amount fluctuating every other month by the cost of the outdoor light.

Under the new system, we had the "estimated payments" check marked, the reps could see it in the system, they claimed we were enrolled - but our bills that arrived acted as though we weren't in that payment plan.

They couldn't explain it. We were told "Oh, well, it's probably due to the cutover to the new system. Next month's bill should be normal." But it wasn't.

"Oh, it's probably just hiccups - I just changed something here so next month will work for you." Nope.

"It shows you're enrolled. Maybe it's in your spam email?" We get the emails fine. It's the wrong damned payment plan.

Our friends and family didn't have these problems. I figured it was because their idiotic new system couldn't handle monthly estimates plus a bimonthly secondary meter.

So we said "to heck with this" and dropped the outdoor light (installed our own floodlights instead).

MAGICALLY estimated payment bills started working for our account.

Funny that.

Kudos on going farther the Hard Way.

<comment><USER3> Why didn't you ask to speak to a manager?

<comment><USER2> Oh we did. Several.

The one who said "Oh, it's probably just hiccups - I just changed something here so next month will work for you." was one of them. Pretty sure he just "turned it off and on again", praying the problem would go away or that I'd give up.

And in a way - I did. At a loss to them. What I pay in additional metered power for the floodlights is peanuts compared to what we were being charged every other month.

Honestly I couldn't be happier with the final result.

But that's also why I complimented the author of the original content who stuck to it long enough to (possibly) get the broken system fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they are not billing you, stop paying them! Go talk to a federal debt settlement attorney, this will make a grate class action, and you can get paid good money for being a class rap. I am not an expert in this area, but I am pretty sure there is a case here for damages if they try to collect money from you without presenting you with a bill first.

<comment><USER5> [http://i.imgur.com/nNAyxbA.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/nNAyxbA.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Hi Sneak. You've been on Hacker News for well over a 1,000 days and seem to be a value added member of the community. I'm sure you already know this but image responses are not accepted here like they are on reddit. Not that there's anything wrong with reddit, I spend a lot of time there too and love the site but the two communities are different.

Please keep image responses on reddit and off Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> I accept them, and the prominent HNer sitting at the table with me laughed at it and upvoted it. If pg or our other overlords have any issue with pun-based humor, they have yet to codify them in the rules.

There _is_ , however, a rule against complaining about HN turning into Reddit. The official HN guidelines read as follows:

 _" If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"_

My per-comment average is nearly twice yours. Please pick on someone else.

I'm sorry you don't like my comment. I thought it was grate.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the followup. That's a good point about it not being in the guidelines while referring to reddit actually is. I was referring to something I thought was in the rules about comments adding to the conversation but I don't see it there now.

I still don't think links fit the style of this site but in the future I'll probably just downvote and let the numbers speak for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's likely much more than two databases. Most MSOs outsource billing and customer service to companies like Convergent. It's a mess of legacy regions and products with different vendors involved. Try troubleshooting phone number porting -- that goes through Accenture.

You can take one of my bills -- I receive two Ecobills and a paper bill!

<comment><USER8> They have many more than two databases. Different geographical units use entirely separate billing systems to reduce vendor lock-in.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely true. My initial intent was to oversimplify the problem and explain to friends, not the HackerNews audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Verizon appears to have some similar problem. I never even signed up for electronic billing. They just decided to stop sending paper, and I got bills via email for 2 or 3 months, then they stopped and I didn't notice until they called me to ask if I was going to pay my bill! Eventually, I just decided to have my computer remind me to pay the bill instead of relying on them to remind me. It's such nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've noticed this issue since I switched to comcast last year. I figured it was a bug that would get fixed soon. I actually didn't pay my bill the first month because I never received anything saying I needed to pay until I received a reminder email about my account balance. I've just set up auto pay and track the bill through my financial software

</comment><comment><USER11> "So now you've got customer data stored in two places, and you need to sync them. Syncing can actually be a challenge: Which database is the "master"? How often should they be synced? "

I've called this problem the "Non-Authoritative Data Source" problem for years - NADS. Never quite caught on though...

</comment><comment><USER12> It baffles me that they would tell you that they aren't going to fix that bug.

The end of the blog post have me a good laugh.

</comment><comment><USER13> I encountered this as well. The support rep's workaround was to change my Ecobill address back to my Comcast address. I then enabled forwarding from that address and it works fine. Such a pain.</comment>


What if we had a great standard library in JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thomasfuchs/what-if-we-had-a-great-standard-library-in-javascript-52692342ee3f <comment><USER2> It would be great to have a standard library but what will it contain and what will be left out?

How about locally caching 10-20 of the top libraries, so we skip including React, LoDash and what-not in every page? And I don't mean CDN caching, but having a separate cache right in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Many of the packages on NPM are literally one-liners.

I've never seen one in the 2 or 3 years I've browsed NPM for my needs. Can someone provide some examples?</comment>


WebEngage live demo feature - how we did it - avlesh-singh http://engineering.webengage.com/2011/11/24/try-a-demo-feature-why-and-how-we-did-it/

<comment><AUTHOR> "For the uninitiated, WebEngage is a simple customer feedback cum short survey tool for websites."

Maybe "cum" has been adopted as the new slang, but it just seems out of place.

<comment> avlesh-singh :). Got it replaced with "and". BTW, did you like the tool Brandon?</comment></comment>


Why choose Xamarin? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pauloortins.com/2014/06/25/why-choose-xamarin/ <comment><USER3> It amazes me that the constant complaint on here is the price. Seriously folks, if you are a professional developer (by that I mean your primary ability to earn money for you and your family is the development of software) then the cost of a Xamarin license should be looked at as a factor of time.

How much time will it save you? Lets imagine your current project to build an iOS and Android app of identical functionality you are estimating at 6 weeks for each platform. 12 total weeks. Lets say that Xamarin tech gives you a 10% boost (it will be much higher but lets be conservative), that means over the 60 business days, you get back 6. Assume you have 8 hours of work per day and you just bought 48 hours of your time. The basic license which does nearly everything most people need is the Indie license and $300 per platform. Six hundred dollars to buy 48 hours of your time back means the purchase is viable if you value your time at more than 12.50 per hour.

If you value your time less than that, you have bigger problems than which mobile tooling to use.

The truth is the productivity factor is much higher than 10% and the license is good for a year, pick up a couple other projects like this through the year and that number collapses. For me this year I will probably do 4 cross plat projects with Xamarin and my productivity diff is north of 50%. The purchase is a no brainer.

<comment><USER4> Here's the problem: it's too expensive to learn on my own, and I can't advocate for C#, F# or Mono without already being an expert. Yes, I am a professional software engineer, and I support my family that way. But I have other expenses and interests, too, and blowing money on a compiler/IDE/platform just so I can play with it in my spare time doesn't really work for me.

Think of it another way: how do you plan to grow the next generation of engineers if they can't afford your technology to learn on, but they can download a JDK and a good Scala IDE for free?

Moreover, I'm not sure how you're arriving at a 10% productivity gain without knowing what I'm already working on. It may be 10% compared to Objective C for iOS, but is it 10% for my server-side Scala project?

<comment><USER4> Maybe the tacit assumption here is that I'm doing development for Android and iOS; I'm currently interested in neither, although I do think F# is a compelling language and I'd love to be able to advocate for it at my workplace. However, given the fact that we're a Linux shop, Xamarin has made it really hard to push for Mono/F# as an alternative to Scala.

<comment><USER3> Another thing that colors my perspective - I have been on my own for 15 years. I don't have to consider the company, legacy or other devs in the shop. It is me, whom I choose to sub-contract to and what jobs I choose to take on. There is a level of freedom in that I often take for granted.

<comment><USER5> Right and as an independent dev Xamarin makes a mertic SHIT ton of sense, though once Ruby Motion has Android I'd argue that is a way better value. But as a guy working a day job hoping to bootstrap a startup/indie game on my nights and weekends $600-$2000 is ALOT of dough to drop, Ruby motion is $200 and I can swing that without much of a second thought, honestly I could swing $600-$2000 is within my range also I mean I'm extremely lucky in my salary compared to the rest of the world but it's A LOT harder to justify on top of a $3000 macbook pro retina, an intellij license, and the rest of my day used dev tools. Not trying to attack you on your stance I just would love Xamarin to rearrange their pricing to something that makes sense for different markets. I know that $20 a month plus 15-20% of app profits or something more flexible may make them much more popular with certain crowds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The killer problem with Xamarin is to use it effectively you have to be expert in both Xamarin and the native platform you're targeting. This is because most of the work of mobile apps ends up being tied to the UI, which has a platform specific API.

If your app happens to deviate from this, then at least for Android once more you're in platform specific land (for example, services), but I've seen people doing things like rolling their own ghetto mini database in C# to give themselves a portable data model, when it would be faster to use SQLite on Android and iOS, just to justify the decision to use Xamarin at all.

So, it can work, but people have a tendency to greatly overestimate how much of a mobile app can actually be platform independent anyway. Games are a different proposition, and this is one reason why Unity has cleaned up.

<comment><USER3> YMMV but for me, there was not 'learning' of Xamarin. There really is no Xamarin framework - there is the mobile frameworks themselves for which there is an almost 1:1 translation. CalculateFoo in ObjC or Java will in nearly every case be CalculateFoo in C#. In the cases where the recommended method is to use a higher level abstraction (like for table data in iOS), the option to use a mirror of the ObjC pattern is there but there is an easier approach available if you choose that.

The key for me was understanding the idiosyncrasies of both Android and iOS and their patterns and then using C# to craft as much reusable code as possible. It drives my approach and I failed to get the re-use level I wanted on my first true cross platform app build, but since I have learned those lessons I have gotten much better at it.

(note: I have yet to use Xamarin.Forms, this experience is based on Xamarin in the past 15 months)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someone mentioned Titanium earlier. Titanium shares the major advantages Paulo points out in his case for Xamarin (i.e. single language, cross-platform, native apps, access to native APIS). But Titanium also has a couple clear advantages over Xamarin:

      - Titanium is FOSS - Xamarin's cost is merely very inconvenient; its closedness is much more repulsive
      - Titanium doesn't sideline those of us who develop on linux (a linux-based OS rules the mobile market, after all)

On the other hand, C# is a beautiful, evolved language that I would love to try out with mobile development, and I can appreciate a shiny IDE. However, as long as the above conditions apply, I'll always consider open and developer- friendly solutions like Titanium first before resorting to Xamarin.

</comment><comment><USER8> Xamarin's IDE is not as good as VS, but it is often much better than XCode, and C# and F# are both more pleasant languages to work in for people with the vast majority of experiences (C++, Java, .Net, Ruby), so even without all the cross platform goodness I prefer to work with Xamarin. (Swift may change some of that, I haven't looked into it yet).

I've never had a problem easily translating Obj C StackOverflows or blog posts to Xamarin/C# so essentially you get the whole community as well, with no worries about Xamarin specificness.

That said, I think their current pricing structure makes sense for them right now. They are not 'quite' at the polish level, not quite at the level that average people can do things averagely. There is still just a little more cross platform knowledge and effort required. The price serves as both a barrier to entry to manage the community size, and provides them enough capital (on top of outside investment) to keep investing toward a fully mass market approach.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have done a lot amount of development in MonoTouch / MonoDroid (full time for about 2.5 years now). I started using them back when they were beta, and I would wager we have one of the larger apps written in Xamarin (about 250kloc).

First of all, it's tricky. It took our team a long time to get the rhythm of simultaneous Android/iOS development. For a long time every single push broke something.

Some annoyances:

Visual studio project files don't merge. You need a special xml aware merge tool to do this. Even then, its a pain in the ass.

It can be very tricky to abstract the differences between Droid and iOS if you're interacting with the OS a lot.

Some things to know:

Just because you're in C# land, doesn't mean your API is. You're going to spend a lot of time implementing stuff in C# that feels wrong because your API is ObjC/Java.

Sometimes there isn't a good mapping between NS data types between the APIs.

You're going to spend a LOT of time in the iOS / Droid docs, so you'd better be comfortable with ObjC / Java.

Overall I'm happy with the experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally I much prefer Ruby Motion to Xamarin. I like ruby more, it's a closer work flow to my standard python/django, Ruby/Rails based workflow (terminal and text editor based). Intellij provides a great ide (MUCH better than Xamarin studio, one of my least favorite IDE's all though visual studio is even better than intellij's offerings IMO). In version 3.0 they will offer Android support and at that point I think Ruby Motion will be the best native app option.

Almost forgot to mention that, all of the ruby is compiled down to actual Native obj-c runtime code. Great performance and look, as good as a regular Obj-C or Java app.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I wasn't aware of that announcement. Last month's blog post says: "If you have a RubyMotion app for iOS or OS X and want to port it to Android, you can even share some of the code." ([http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/87048665656/rubymotion-3-0-s...](http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/87048665656/rubymotion-3-0-sneak- peek-android-support))

I haven't used Ruby Motion myself -- do you know how much of the code can be reused excluding platform-specific UI stuff? There's a significant difference between 5% and 95%. :)

<comment><USER11> From the blog post, that seems like a rather perilous approach.. what are the chances they get all the builtin Ruby stuff to work the same way despite basing it on Java equivalents?

<comment><USER10> And what are the chances they get all the Android Ruby stuff to work perfectly in the initial release? As opposed to 6 months later after the bug fixes are deployed; hope you didn't have a release window for that fall 2014 app!

(Perhaps I'm overly cynical, though I've seen this before on other platforms.)

<comment><USER5> Actually I'd say pretty good as their software has been really high quality so far. That and the fact that JRuby already exists and I'm pretty sure thats the target runtime, a lot of their work is already pretty solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I realize that the difference of $700 could be made up in improved development performance but I really, really wish they'd allow VS support for the indie license. It's not a case of saving more it's a risk/reward thing for me. I can see the possible value but, without being able to pick it up quickly in an environment I know I can't justify either spending an extra $700 or picking up another IDE/workspace along with the curve of mobile dev and setups for the different devices. Though I understand the cost, it provides tremendous value and you can't just give that away for free.

<comment><USER13> It's clear to me that Xamarin is trying to get everyone to pay right now. The free license won't even allow you to build the Xamarin.Forms demo, and Forms is one of the most significant new features they added. Cross platform apps with a common UI and codebase, no more separate views for each platform, and data binding! I think they're scaring off small developers by requiring the several hundred dollar investment to use Xamarin, even if it is a great product.

Where I work, we chose Xamarin over PhoneGap/Cordova.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. Prices could be lower and they would have a bigger market share in mobile development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not choose C++/Qt/QML?

<comment><USER15> AFAIK, QML has barely any native UI integration. Are there iOS and Android components? Why does nothing turn up when doing a simple google search?

<comment><USER16> This email just in today:

[http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/android- development/20...](http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/android- development/2014-June/000388.html)

It's native look and feel though, and not native integration. However AFAIK it goes to great lengths to blend in with the actual device you're running it on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a common misconception that phonegap and cordova don't have the same access to native APIs. They do, but they are limited by what plugins are available, and your ability or interest to build ones to fill the "gap."

For example, I wrote a plugin recently to send low-level broadcast UDP packets on Android and iOS through Cordova. The plugin API is just a bridge and sets up a calling convention for Javascript-to-native code.

<comment><USER18> 100% true. I'm going to piss many off by this statement I'm sure... but if you are a web developer Xamarin offers no advantages against PhoneGap/Cordova I don't know anyone that is "just a C# developer" and hasn't done any web development, maybe Xamarin makes sense for those.

Take a look at Ionic Framework if you think PhoneGap/Cordova can't provide a native look and feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want to use Xamarin like [http://www.remobjects.com/elements/hydrogene/](http://www.remobjects.com/elements/hydrogene/) remobjects c# works.

(Well, I guess I'd prefer to use it in F# too).

How well does it work to ignore the .Net parts and just use the nice IDE/Packaging/Not java story?

</comment><comment> rational-future The big question IMHO is will Microsoft buy Xamarin or not. If they do the price will certainly fall drastically. On one hand it will give MS way more apps on their app store. On the other if Xamarin becomes very popular Apple may block Xamarin built apps from it's app store.

<comment><USER20> Apple tried blocking certain platforms in the past, at that time Xamarin wasn't included since they are following the guidelines set in Apple's developer terms of use. Apple changed their mind very quickly about that decision too.

Xamarin still requires a mac. Your code is still compiled using LLVM (or whatever engine Apple will introduce later). The resulting app that is uploaded to Apple looks just like an app that was built using XCode.

It will be interesting to compare a simple app and see the difference in the resulting package between Xamarin and XCode

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does Xamarin compare to a more open (and free) solution like MonoCross?

<comment><USER22> You can't really compare them. MonoCross is a crossplat MVC framework that you use on top of Xamarin's Monotouch/droid/etc. to increase your shared code. Xamarin allows you to write about the same code for multiple platforms, but it doesn't make it easier to share the same exact code. E.g [http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.mobile](http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.mobile)

The code looks similar across platforms, but it's not exactly, the same - <USER2> can't make one change and have it carry across to all platforms. Monocross brings you closer to a write-once for all platforms experience.

A better comparison is Monocross v.s. MvvmCross

<comment><USER21> Ah, thanks, I didn't catch that MonoCross required Xamarin - it's not obvious from the homepage at all (or even looking for it on any page).

Was hoping to use it to learn some C# (beyond the simple hello world type of thing) - Xamarin's pricing is pretty steep for an amateur/hobbyist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are so many factual errors and outdated assumptions in your thread that i wont take the time to do a writeup. To put it short: \- You're wrong. \- Given the current speed of Javascript on mobile, Xamarin is just a job creation tool for unemployed .NET/WPF Developers. - You cannnot reuse run-of- the-mill web devs for hybrid app development. \- Good web developers are just as expensive as good native devs. \- Hybrid app development is not easier than native development.

Have a nice weekend.

<comment><USER18> I forgot to add this to anyone who disagrees with this comment. Take a look at Ionic Framework if you think PhoneGap/Cordova can't provide a native look and feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Xamarin recently released special pricing for small businesses and startups. Just FYI!</comment>


Web server performance shoot out - simple pages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davber.com/2007/12/10/web-server-performance-shoot-out-simple-pages/ <comment><USER2> This is kind of a pointless exercise. Nobody on this site is using RoR (or whatever) to build a few mildly dynamic pages. Even if you were to compare an identical application built in each language/framework, you'd still be testing just that application. And no one should be surprised that RoR is "slow" in comparison to these other options. By the time you slap a framework on any of the others, you'll find they're an order of magnitude slower--maybe not as slow as RoR, since the Ruby interpreter is pretty slow, but still much more comparable. In fact, CakePHP is known to be pretty comparable to RoR performance-wise. Likewise for Catalyst, and the Perl interpreter is significantly faster than the Ruby interpreter.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good test, and the results are quite interesting.

I'm surprised at just how much Apache + PHP beat out RoR. However, as the disclaimer in the post says, "it's not a real world test".

I wonder why connecting to a database wasn't included? It confused me initially because the acronym on the graph is "LAMP" - should it not be "LAP"? :)

<comment><USER2> Why would that surprise you? RoR is stunningly slow and PHP is pretty damned fast (in general--though I've seen a lot of pathologically bad PHP code in the wild that sucked for performance, usually due to database abuse...of course, I've also seen RoR apps that are even slower due to database abuse). Luckily, most applications built in RoR (or PHP, or Catalyst, or Django, etc.) never have to scale out very much, and by the time they do, the revenue is hopefully there to help fix the problem by brute force.

<comment><USER3> Hehe...perhaps it didn't really surprise me so much, maybe I was just hoping for it to be a bit better!

I really don't like code that "hacks together" a solution and then requires a substantial remedy later (who does?!) so I'm quite interested in getting it right from the beginning.

Assuming that many of us here develop web applications, and that some are going to need to scale heavily, what do you recommend as a good solution?

I have yet to read either of these two books, but they are on my list (I only have one at home, the other I'll order): [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Building- Scalable-Web-Sites-Henderso...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Scalable-Web- Sites-Henderson/dp/0596102356/ref=pd_sim_b?ie=UTF8&qid=1197382004&sr=8-1) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Performance-MySQL-Advanced- Technique...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Performance-MySQL-Advanced-Techniques- Administrators/dp/0596003064/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197382004&sr=8-1)

Both are O'Reilly so I'm assuming they'll be good!

Let me know if you have any other resources for this, because I imagine it's a very common issue for successful startups.

<comment><USER4> _"High Performance MySQL [and other oxymorons]"_

Not a bad book, though, for letting you know about all of the random features MySQL has. It's hard to get the same information in one place otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The High Cost of Homeownership - <AUTHOR> https://www.getrichslowly.org/cost-of-homeownership/ <comment><USER2> Also if you are going to buy a house like this, then in the next line say "Paid a Handyman" \- you have already lost (From the standpoint of frugality).

If you want a fixer upper have some fun and learn to do things right yourself. Your projects take longer but they are very fulfilling. 90% of the tiny-home movement innovations are all from people who are just hacking their living spaces.

A home is not an investment that will make you money. You will (almost) never get $'s out of it that you put in with _time_ and effort. What you will get back is the joy of a space that is purely you- doing work on you home can be like tending a zen garden... hell you can make a zen garden. Its your creative space.

The same argument goes for cars- I just bought a new car and have spent the past week going through the service manual because I want to know it as much as I care to dig. I like to work on my own vehicles. It seems like people generally either fear working on things themselves or just don't take pleasure in physical problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER3> > But that savings of $600 per month is more than outweighed by the huge > repair costs we've incurred. It'll take ten to fifteen years to make up the > difference, to break even with the condo expenses.

Unlikely to ever break even. The opportunity cost of the $100,000 they spent is enormous. They'll never break even on that by saving $600/month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, if you own a house, you pay for maintenance. If you rent, your rent pays the landlord for his cost of maintenance, and if you're lucky, the landlord will actually do some. You pay either way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, that house was a total loss from the start.

</comment><comment><USER6> You only need to watch youtube videos of abandoned houses to see clearly that houses aren't investments.</comment>


Startup Quote: Mark Cuban, co-founder, HDNet - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3273253182

<comment><AUTHOR> Every no gets me closer to a yes.

\- Mark Cuban (@mcuban)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3273253182></comment>


How To Inspire Everyday Cycling - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028688/terminal-velocity/how-to-inspire-everyday-cycling?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcodesign%2Ffeed+%28Co.Design%29

<comment><USER2> That was a content-free waste of my time. It said nothing about cycling in general. It's about a challenge to improve bicycles, on the assumption that improved bicycles inspire cycling. I think the infrastructure is more important, but optimizing a small part is also good.

Only, it doesn't even get to how to improve bicycles - it's a kick-off to a series of future articles on the topic.

I was expecting something at least as informative as [http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/engineering-a-better- bicy...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/engineering-a-better-bicycle/) .</comment>


Find out more about Iran's Startup scene  - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/iran-startups/d17a610d6864

<comment><USER2> It must be maddening to try to build a business given such restrictions. We complain about censorship in the West, and to be sure there are problems, but this article puts it in perspective.

Are founders liable for content on their networks? E.g. if I were to post blasphemous content to an Iranian blog, would the blog owner be charged?

<comment><AUTHOR> censorship is not that bad. They put responsibility on business owners in order to make their job easier. In practice, censorship is mostly aimed at news sites (mostly foreign websites), social networks (that clearly is not working), and some online ecommerce sites like Amazon and eBay.

I think government prefers localised clones. That actually is not a bad thing for startups here.

situation is improving and startups are booming. I was impressed by the rate of improvement. Iran can steal the torch from all Middle East countries.</comment></comment>


Entrepreneurs Are the New Labour (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepreneurs-are-the-new-labor-part-i

<comment><AUTHOR> Previously submitted here, to the sound of whistling wind and tumbleweed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4538034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4538034) \- I thought it worth resubmitting (though I had to sneakily remove a path separator to make it work). Inspiration was this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8509974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8509974)</comment>


PiDrive 314GB Offers Power-Efficient Storage for Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/data-storage/raspberry-pi-hard-drive-pidrive-187871 <comment><USER2> Are there any provisions for redundancy?</comment>


Do React Hooks Replace Redux? TL;DR: Hooks Are Great, but No - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/do-react-hooks-replace-redux-210bab340672 <comment><USER2> I frequently disagree with Eric Elliott's opinions (like claiming that TypeScript is useless, or that everyone should learn "concatenative inheritance"). That said, this article basically matches how I would describe the situation: hooks like `useContext` and `useReducer` overlap with some of the ways you'd use Redux, but overall are a different tool for different use cases. Both have their place, and there's still lots of reasons to use Redux.

I've tackled this topic in a few places:

\- Reactathon 2019 Keynote: The State of Redux ([https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/03/presentation- state...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/03/presentation-state-of- redux/))

\- Redux - Not Dead Yet! ([https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2018/03/redux- not-dead-yet...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2018/03/redux-not-dead- yet/))

\- Thoughts on React Hooks, Redux, and Separation of Concerns ([https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/07/blogged-answers- th...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/07/blogged-answers-thoughts-on- hooks/))

<comment><USER3> If you're referring to ["The TypeScript Tax"]([https://medium.com/javascript- scene/the-typescript-tax-132ff...](https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the- typescript-tax-132ff4cb175b)), Eric never said it was useless. "Many developers love using it, and there are many aspects of the TypeScript developer experience I genuinely love." There's a whole section called "What I Love About TypeScript" and he even uses it in some of his open-source projects. What he actually says is that there is a cost to using TypeScript (an obvious fact). And most JavaScript developers use [object concatenation]([https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-hidden-treasures- of-...](https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-hidden-treasures-of-object- composition-60cd89480381)) all the time, especially with Redux. He's right - every JavaScript developer should know what it is and how to use it, even if they don't recognize it by the word "concatenation".</comment></comment>


Spotify resets some account passwords citing 'suspicious activity' - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/spotify-password-resets/ <comment><USER2> I had this happen to me recently. I just rolled with it; my password was still the nine-character all-lowercase default I'd had since seventh grade. LastPass made the reset a ten-second job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Article also links my Ask HN post from yesterday, which explains why the thread keeps getting random comments...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19980955)</comment>


The Theme programming language (Scheme w/ static typing) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rhinocerus.net/forum/lang-misc/703270-new-programming-language-theme.html

<comment><USER2> I will probably never use this - but I do enjoy new crafts.

How would this be useful, over Scheme?</comment>


SEOmoz is now Moz - <AUTHOR> http://moz.com/

<comment><USER2> I have always felt that there is some potential for brand confusion between Mozilla and SEOmoz. The potential for confusion between "Mozilla" and "Moz" seems even greater.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a post from Rand Fishkin that provides some more details into the rebrand: <http://moz.com/blog/goodbye-seomoz-hello-moz></comment>


Code snippet friendly blogging platform? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know a free hosted code snippet friendly blogging platform? Eg. being able to post formatted code snippets in your blog post.
I am referring here exclusively to blogging platforms which are free and don't have to be installed.
I know Wordpress doesn't offer that and neither does movable type except through the software version.
What do you guys use? Any alternatives? <comment><USER2> Posterous supports Gist:

[http://blog.posterous.com/posterous-now-supports- traileraddi...](http://blog.posterous.com/posterous-now-supports- traileraddict-embeds-a)

<comment><AUTHOR> this is very limited functionality. eg. donesn't work for js code snippets. thx though.</comment></comment>


Zoom will remove server behind Mac webcam security hole - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/09/zoom-will-remove-server-behind-mac-security-hole/ <comment><USER2> > Release notes of 4.4.53932.0709: Remove local web server -We are > discontinuing the use of a local web server on Mac devices. Following the > update, the local web server will be completely removed from the Zoom > installation Option to uninstall Zoom -Zoom users can now uninstall the Zoom > desktop application and all of its components through the settings menu</comment>


The best investment advice you'll never get - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get

<comment><USER2> Just a question that popped into my head: what would happen if everyone followed a passive strategy, ie, no one was active? Isn't some sort of active strategy required, somewhere, for funds to be directed at all?

Though, I do think on average fund managers probably don't actually make anything like useful predictions. But perhaps we do need someone, somewhere, looking for good investment.

My guess is that there is a role in society for some conservative, value based investing, but at the moment there are more people trying to do this than is useful, and even more people trying to find good investments by worthless strategies (like trying to predict future movements from past movements).

<comment><USER3> The advice against trying to beat the market is based on the fact that there are tens of thousands of highly intelligent people paid to analyze securities, and they're all feeding off each other's behavior. To beat the market, you have to beat a conventional wisdom based on the accumulated expertise of a lot of people. For instance, if you want to buy stock in a Malaysian steel company, you have to decide that you understand the current value of this stock better than a crowd-sourced price generated by the research of a horde of steel industry specialists, people with intimate knowledge of the Malaysian economy, business environment, and political environment, people who can afford to spend all day reading forecasts of economic conditions in the countries where this company's steel is consumed, and people who have a drink with a VP from the company and get gossip about the CEO's health and the competence of his likely successor.

If no one was trying to beat the market, it would be easy to beat the market. But since so many people are busy trying, it's silly to try to compete unless you want to take it as seriously as the professionals do and get plugged in the way they are.

The "random walk" hypothesis says you _can_ beat the professionals. About half the time. By flipping a coin. But the professionals are insiders, and as well- regulated as the stock market is, I would assume that an outsider playing against insiders in a 50/50 game will not quite win his full 50% share.

The hope that a person can price stocks better than the market as a whole rests on a couple of possibilities:

1\. Beating full-time professional analysts at analysis in your spare time, because you're just so bad-ass.

2\. Identifying a price that is heavily influenced by ignorant people and beating them by just being reasonably well-informed -- but this is not an original idea and hence is a special case of #1.

3\. Finding a niche that you know intimately for some reason, and in which you have no professional competition. Oh, wait, this is just #2 again. Or maybe you found a niche small enough that it doesn't get a lot of attention from professional analysts, and you can make a little bit of money at it. That might work!

4\. Being the first one to take into account a new idea or source of information. This one will make you wildly rich, and it's fun to dream, but while you're looking for that brilliant idea, there's no reason to risk real money on your ideas-in-progress.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe the "analysts" are just not any good.

For a specific example, look at how the "hobbyists" are beating the "professional" analysts at predicting Apple's quarterly performance, time and time again.

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/20/apples-blow-out- quart...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/20/apples-blow-out-quarter-the- bloggers-called-it-the-street-blew-it/)

<comment><USER5> If there's one company where hobbyists will beat professionals, it's Apple. Do you have any other examples?

<comment><USER4> There are many objective studies that show that individuals with their own specific trading/investing strategies can beat the street. But that's not really the point.

The point is that AAPL is now only second to XOM in terms of market cap, and is not exactly a tiny blip on the radar. It is a stock that is being watched by literally millions. If these "professional" analysts have so many resources at their disposal, have the inside track on confidential information and are operating at such an uneven playing field as the parent postulates, then why would they consistently be beaten by the "hobbyists"?

<comment><USER5> Well, the fact that Apple is so large actually serves my point: there is a _lot_ of information on Apple. The information asymmetry between hobbyists and analysts is nil for Apple.

In fact, I'd argue the information asymmetry tilts in favor of _individuals_ , considering that analysts publish their forecast. I wouldn't be shocked if these guys use "analyst expectations" as an input.

Anyway, this is bad news for the analyst, because the one resource they _don't_ have is time to focus on one company. Hobbyists, however, can focus on Apple all they want. So I'm not surprised that Apple fans nail their earnings forecast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses." - Warren Buffet

<http://www.longbets.org/362>

<comment><USER7> > Their opposites, passive investors, will by definition do about average. In > aggregate their positions will more or less approximate those of an index > fund. Therefore the balance of the universe—the active investors—must do > about average as well. However, these investors will incur far greater > costs. So, on balance, their aggregate results after these costs will be > worse than those of the passive investors.

This argument is wrong? edit: it's like saying this about strategies of chess players, one group is using strategy A and another is using strategy B:

Chess players using strategy A are known to perform about average (by the nature of their strategy). So this new strategy, B, has to perform about average too.

This neglects that there are other strategies than A and B. The whole world is not either passive investors or hedge funds.

And he's saying something even stronger: there is no _subset_ of B players that is better than average.

So while he may well be correct in his prediction, he makes it sound like he has a mathematically tight argument for why he is correct. But the conclusion of his argument (that active investors will perform about average) is not the prediction of his bet (that hedge funds will perform about average, and because they have higher operating cost they will lose).

<comment><USER8> He's making the (correct) assumption that the speculative stock market where active investors expect to make their money is a zero-sum game. For there to be winners in "buy low, sell high" there have to be an equal amount of losers.

So, if there are going to be winners, there have to be an equal amount of losers. It's difficult to siphon money off of someone passively invested in an index fund, so the active investors are competing against themselves.

Because active investment has a much higher cost than passive, as a group they will be significantly worse off compared to passive investors. This is so self-evident as to be not even worth betting against.

Note that this isn't to say that there won't be big active winners individually. But in a chess tournament, if the top players use strategy A that wins 90% of the time, and others use strategy B that wins 51% of the time, that guarantees the existence of some other strategy that performs below average.

The stock market isn't necessarily a zero-sum game like chess because companies pay dividends, but that's rare and small enough to be insignificant compared to the amount of money gained and lost through speculation.

<comment><USER9> Dividends aren't what makes the speculative stock market fixed-sum.

Players that are getting utility out of things other than direct monetary value, say reduced risk or improved liquidity, make it a non-zero-sum game.

I am agreeing with both of you to some extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting comment on that article:

 _Index investing (applied to extremely wide market indexes) makes an assumption that there will be a continuous and infinite increase in the total market capitalization of that index. As time marches forward I beleive we will experience a deceleration of worldwide market cap increase._

Anyone have thoughts on this?

<comment><USER11> I have several concerns with index fund/ETF investing:

1\. How much of the underlying stocks, that make up the Index, are really owned by the Index fund/ETF? I doubt that such funds/ETF actually own 100% of the required underlying stocks, may be using some sort of option/hedge strategy.

2\. In what scenario, not owning the actual underlying stocks can be detrimental to index fund/ETF? I am looking for what may cause failure of such funds/ETF and who may lose.

3\. Is index fund/ETF investing artificially inflating price for underlying stocks compared to price of the rest of the non-index stocks in the market?

4\. Can index investing cause Index "Bubble"?

<comment><USER12> For European ETF:

1.) Depends on the ETF. There is

a) Full Replication. All stocks are 1 to 1 in the ETF.

b) Swap based. EU swap ETFs can have up to 10% (but not more) in swap (what you mean by option/hedge), the rest is stocks. Oftentimes ETF issuers have an insurance on those swaps. If the swap counterparty goes bankrupt you loose that 10%.

c) optimized sampling. You have different stocks (or not all of that index) in your ETF. The idea is to find stocks that corelate closely to those in the index.

2.) By buying the ETF you "own" the stocks. ETF are regulated like mutual funds (at least in EU).

3.) ETF are only a small fraction of the worldwide trade. But obviously if your company gets into a popular index (s&p 500) you can be quite happy.

4.) If everybody would only invest in indices, the market won't play anymore and it would be smarter to buy individual stocks again. This is the index investing paradox. But very unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER9> About 4: Active investor could get a better performance than passive investors, if that situation would arise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It should be mentioned that this article is from December 2006, when index funds were less widely adopted than they are today.

<comment><USER14> ???

Index funds were as widely adopted as you could ask for back in 1996 when I first started investing in them. And it was common knowledge even then that the S&P 500 tended to outperform 70%+ of managed mutual funds.

If that's the message this article is trying to convey, it certainly has the wrong title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A well-written article, but really? Investing in a low-cost broad index fund is the /only/ investment advice I get nowadays.

<comment><USER16> Having also read this a lot, it makes me wonder how the clever financial world will find a way to take a lot of people owning index funds and somehow fleece them.

I also find myself pondering the macroeconomic effects of a lot of the market simply being in index funds, though I'm sure we're a long ways from that.

My personal rule-of-thumb "By the time you've heard of it, it's too late to get in on it" is also triggering, though I have to admit for the life of me I really can't imagine how to exploit this tendency. But I am anything but a financial wizard.

<comment><USER17> _take a lot of people owning index funds and somehow fleece them_

There are strategies to do this now, but they're hard to execute. One example is to target stocks that are likely to enter or drop off indicies. Index funds will be looking to buy or sell them soon.

Mostly these strategies depend on your ability to set up a very high speed link to the computers that clear trades and interpret the algorithms that index funds use to establish their samples of the market. If you can get in just ahead of the index funds and their monster volume, you can shave a few tenths of pennies from the investors.

You can make millions with those strategies but it's a drop in the index fund bucket. Quite a lot of "quant" trading activity is about ripping off ordinary people by unnoticed fractions by getting in ahead of them. Much more innocuous than the large scale bribery and fraud that makes up so much of the financial industry.

<comment><USER18> This was covered in a WSJ article yesterday. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870400870457563...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704008704575638583030174768.html?KEYWORDS=index+fund) "Over the long run, sharp traders getting out in front of these forced portfolio changes have poached at least 0.38 percentage point of annual return away from Russell 2000 index funds, estimates a new study in the Journal of Empirical Finance."

<comment><USER19> Not all index methodologies are created equal, the way that Russell handles periodic reconstitution is particularly susceptible to front running. Other indexing methods are not as bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got a wake up call about 4 years ago when my broker tried to convince me to buy into a hedge fund. Buried in the prospectus was an entry load of 8%. Fired him, and have been in index funds since.

</comment><comment><USER21> Along the same lines here's an interview with a guy who's essentially shaped my investment philosophy: <http://www.kirkreport.info/2009/03/qa-with-less- antman.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm 28, and I don't want to end up like Liz Lemon ("well I have $12,000 in checking"). What's a good primer on investing? I don't have a ton of money but I'd like to get into it.

<comment><USER23> I recommend Andrew Tobias's classic _The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need_. Very sensible, and very readable. <http://www.andrewtobias.com/theonly.html>

<comment><USER22> Will take a look, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One way to beat index funds is through piggyback investing on those who can beat them.

Check out <http://alphaclone.com/>

You have to pay for a membership but the site is top notch. They parse investment fund's sec filings and allow you to backtest strategies to see how well they would have performed over a given time frame. You will find strategies that crush any index fund.

I am not affiliated with alphaclone.com.

<comment><USER9> In retrospect there will always be strategies that will beat any index fund. But can you identify such a strategy beforehand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2 words: Renaissance Technologies

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies>

<comment><USER26> Agree, but:

1) They're a huge, huge outlier

2) Any of Renaissance's funds are not nearly as scalable as a passive index fund

3) As a hedge fund will still take a big chunk out of returns as fees

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always thought of the stock market as a form of gambling, and this quote hints at that:

"a list of advantages of active management, which essentially boiled down to the fact that it's more fun"

also:

"There is an innate cultural imperative in this country to beat the odds"

and the stock market is viewed as better than casinos for this kind of gambling.

</comment><comment><USER28> Index funds seem to me to work by reducing churn - the percentage of your stock that is sold and bought each year - because every time you sell then buy you lose a lot of money. I am not yet convinced you have to follow an index.

If you had a fund that did not sell anything and bought a random stock from an index as funds came in would this beat an index fund?

<comment><USER29> Think of the index fund as reducing the risk of depending on any one stock for your gains. I don't know what the distribution of gains is like on an index fund but an answer to your question would likely come from an examination of one.

<comment><USER28> My theoretical fund would have a wide range of stocks. It does not seem to be related to spreading gains or risks.

I have not seen any comparative table of stock churn rates for different funds, but my guess is that index funds do well because they reduce the sell- buy transaction costs, partly by eliminating the cost of human stock pickers, but primarily by reducing the percentage of stocks in the fund that are sold then bought every year. Maybe this is wrong?

My understanding is that an index fund sells and buys stocks to balance the proportions held in the fund as the market capitalisation of the companies changes inside the index. This imposes an apparently unnecessary cost on the fund. If we removed this cost by not selling and buying stocks to keep it equal to the index would the fund become more profitable? I am considering it to be a fund where people invest incrementally over a long period so there would be constant random aquisition of new stocks from the index.

Maybe that doesn't make sense for some reason.

<comment><USER30> Balancing portfolios is basically a universally recommended practice. If you manage your own portfolio, won't you have a similar "churn rate" to the index fund?

<comment><USER28> "Balancing portfolios is basically a universally recommended practice."

The 'balancing' is against a stock market index which will seriously over- represent a particular geography, industry sector, business size, asset class etc. Why choose that index? Because the stock market tells us to?

"If you manage your own portfolio,"

I was considering how to make a 'passive' index fund even more passive.

"won't you have a similar "churn rate" to the index fund?"

An index fund would have a higher churn rate and therefore higher costs than my theoretical fund, but I do not know how much money an index fund spends on index-following sell-buy transactions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do our colour-blind cones achieve colour vision? - <AUTHOR> http://theneurosphere.com/2015/12/07/why-are-all-the-colours-we-experience-composed-of-three-primaries/ <comment><USER2> I'm always surprised to see barely high-school level science articles get on the front page.

An alternative title to this article could be "how spaceless numbers achieve defining space"? Like you just have a basis, and this defines space. Mind blown. Really, how do these magnets work?

<comment><USER3> It's not even an article I'd want to present to a high school class. An RGB pixel on your monitor is not emitting red, green and blue monochromatic (single wavelength) light. Same goes for the light reflected from a CYM pigment. Metamerism is at play, just like in the "real world". The author confuses the need to choose three primaries with a requirement those primaries be monochromatic. And since when have painters stuck to three pigments?

<comment><USER4> Painters don't stick to just three pigments, but all the pigments they use CAN be created by mixing three primaries in different proportions. I'm quite sure that's the whole basis for Thomas Young's colour mixing experiments performed in the 1800s, finding that every colour we see can be made with mixtures of three lights. Any more than that is redundant. Similarly, while an RGB pixel on your monitor may not emit all single-wavelength light, it doesn't negate the validity of the statement that three single wavelengths can be used to recreate all colours visible to the human eye. I'm quite sure that some RGB pixels are indeed single wavelength, though I would love to hear from those of you who know better about this because I don't know for sure...

<comment><USER2> >Painters don't stick to just three pigments, but all the pigments they use CAN be created by mixing three primaries in different proportions.

No. Paint is not light, and has physical properties that constrain what you can do with them. Some colors just don't mix well together, so you'll find recommendation on what exact type of pigment work best for specific mixes.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's true, paint is subtractive, as opposed to light. But isn't it still the case that all pigments can be achieved by mixing three primaries? Whereas in light mixing the primaries are considered to be red, green, blue, in pigment mixing they are considered to be cyan, magenta, yellow. Obviously please correct me if I'm wrong (no sarcasm implied), links would be useful.

<comment><USER5> No. No matter whether you're doing additive or subtractive color, there will be perceivable colors that you can't reach just by mixing a finite number of primaries. In fact, CMYK printing has a rather small gamut, with more colors that are clearly unreachable than RGB has.

Perceivable colors are a three-dimensional space, and colors you can make out of three primaries are a three-dimensional space, but they're different shapes. Mixing primary colors is a way of interpolating between them linearly, and the space of perceivable colors doesn't have convenient linear edges.

Here's an example. Your printer has cyan, magenta, and yellow ink (and also black for convenience). So it can print any color, right? It should be able to print bright lime green, something that looks like RGB #00ff00, right?

No, in fact, you can't print that color without "spot color" ink. When you mix cyan and yellow to make green, it will necessarily get darker. If you use enough cyan and yellow to get full-saturation green, it'll be too dark. If you use less ink, it won't be saturated enough.

Lime green is outside of the CMYK gamut. Similarly, the deep cyan you'd get by printing with lots of cyan ink is outside of the RGB gamut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a former neuroscientist who studied perceptual awareness, there's lots of little things wrong with this article.

1) The RGB palette used in monitors most certainly does not span the whole gamut of human vision. Not even the wide-gamut monitors used professionally can do that yet.

2) The diagram showing each cone type's peak spectral sensitivity is a bit misleading, too. The M- and L-cones are colored red and green, but if you notice carefully, their peaks lie in the green/yellow area, so characterizing them as red/green is misleading. And "each of our cones seeing a primary colour (blue, green, or red)" is flat-out wrong. Every cone fires in proportion to its overlap. The author clarifies this later, but it's best to tell people the caveats up front. Continually referring to "primary" colors is adding to the confusion here.

3) WhIle they did cite an article pointing out that ratio-computing cells exist in the retina, it does NOT follow that "it is the main source of information that the brain has to help it identify the wavelengths of light". The paper itself only talks about spectral separation in retinal cells pre- brain. I don't know where the author got the idea that ratios are the main source of info sent to the brain. Amplitude information is sent, as well.

<comment><USER4> I'm the author of the article, and I'm quite happy to see a response from a neuroscientist who studied this topic in the past. I wanted to ask you about point 3, because obviously I could have made a mistake. From what I understand (and what I have studied) retinal ganglion cells computing the S vs M and S vs M+L dimensions are the critical ones underlying coding of colour information along the blue-yellow and red-green axis. The additive axis, featuring amplitude information, from what I understand primarily concerns luminosity rather than colour discrimination. Without any of the ratio information, colour discrimination would not exist. Am I wrong? Would genuinely love to hear from you on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > A printer generates all the colours we see just by blending three coloured > inks in varying quantities

I thought printers typically use CMYK (4 inks) or CMYKOG (6 inks).

<comment><USER8> Correct. Or more.

OP is incorrect; no tristimulus based (RGB or CMY) combination can reproduce the spectral locus without resorting to imaginary colour primaries. Imaginary primaries cannot be reproduced in reality, and as such, "all the colours we see" is "all the colours we may see from the printer."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I enjoyed reading this article and found it interesting, even if I was re- learning some of the stuff mentioned.

If the errors pointed out by above posters are valid, they should really go over to the OP's blog and post them so she can correct the post.</comment>


Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2013/12/amplituhedron-jewel-quantum-physics/ <comment><USER2> One paper at: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5605](http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5605)</comment>